Adyar Pamphlets The Philosophy of the Vedanta in Its Relations... No. 136 The Philosophy of the Vedanta in Its Relations to the Occidental Metaphysics by Dr. Paul Deussen, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Kiel, Germany An address, delivered before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Saturday the 25th February, 1893 Published in 1930 Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai [Madras] India The Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras. India [Page 1] ON my journey through India I have noticed with satisfaction, that in philosophy till now our brothers in the East have maintained a very good tradition, better perhaps, than the more active but less contemplative branches of the great Indo-Aryan family in Europe, where Empirism, Realism and their natural consequence, Materialism, grow from day to day more exuberantly, whilst metaphysics, the very center and heart of serious philosophy, are supported only by a few ones, who have learned to brave the spirit of the age. In India the influence of this perverted and pervasive spirit of our age has not yet overthrown in religion and philosophy the good traditions of the great ancient time. It is true, that most of the ancient darsanas even in India find only an historical interest; followers of the Sãnkhya-System occur rarely; Nyãya is cultivated mostly as an intellectual sport and exercise, like grammar or mathematics, but the Vedãntic is, now as in the ancient time living in the mind and heart of every thoughtful Hindu. It is true, that even here in the [Page 2] sanctuary of Vedãntic metaphysics, the realistic tendencies, natural to man, have penetrated, producing the misinterpreting variations of Shankara's Adwaita, known under the names Visishtãdwaita, Dwaita, Cuddhãdwaita of Rãmanuja, Mãdhva, Vallabha, but India till now has not yet been seduced by their voices, and of hundred Vedãntins (I have it from a well informed man, who is himself a zealous adversary of Shankara and follower of Rãmãnuja) fifteen perhaps adhere to Rãmãnuja, five to Madhva, five to Vallabha, and seventy-five to Shankarãchãrya. This fact may be for poor India in so many misfortunes a great consolation; for the eternal interests are higher than the temporary ones; and the system of the Vedãnta, as founded on the Upanishads and Vedãnta Sutras and accomplished by Shankara's commentaries on them, equal in rank to Plato and Kant — is one of the most valuable products of the genius of mankind in his researches of the eternal truth, as I propose to show now by a short sketch of Shankara's Adwaita and comparison of its principal doctrines with the best that occidental philosophy has produced till now. Taking the Upanishads, as Shankara does, for revealed truth with absolute authority, it was not an easy task to build out of their materials a consistent philosophical system, for the Upanishads are in Theology, Cosmology and Psychology full of [Page 3] hardest contradictions. So in many passages the nature of Brahman is painted out in various and luxuriant colors, and again we read, that the nature of Brahman is quite unattainable to human words, to human understanding; so we meet sometimes longer reports explaining how the world has been created by Brahman, and again we are told, that there is no world besides Brahman, and all variety of things is mere error and illusion; so we have fanciful descriptions of Page 1 Adyar Pamphlets The Philosophy of the Vedanta in Its Relations... No. 136 the Samsãra, the way of the wandering soul up the heaven and back to the earth, and again read that there is no Samsãra, no variety of souls at all, but only one Âtman, who is fully and totally residing in every being. Shankara in these difficulties created by the nature of his materials, in face of so many contradictory doctrines, which he was not allowed to decline and yet could not admit altogether, has found a wonderful way out, which deserves the attention, perhaps the imitation of the Christian dogmatists in their embarrassments. He constructs out of the materials of the Upanishads two systems; one esoteric, philosophical (called by him nirguna vidyã, sometimes pãramãrthikã avasthã) containing the metaphysical truth for the few ones, rare in all times and countries, who are able to understand it ; and another exoteric, Theological (sagunã vidyã, vyãvhãriki avasthã) for the general public, who want images, not abstract truth, worship, not meditation. [Page 4] I shall now point out briefly the two systems, esoteric and exoteric, in pursuing and confronting them through the four chief parts, which Shankara's system contains, and every complete philosophical system must contain: I. Theology, the doctrine of God or of the philosophical principle. II. Cosmology, the doctrine of the world. III. Psychology, the doctrine of the soul. IV. Eschatology, the doctrine of the last things, the things after death. I. THEOLOGY The Upanishads swarm with fanciful and contradictory descriptions of the nature of Brahman. He is the all-pervading akãsa, is the purusha in the sun, the purusha in the eye; his head is the heaven, his eyes are sun and moon, his breath is the wind, his footstool the earth; he is infinitely great as soul of the universe and infinitely small as the soul in us; he is in particular the Îsvara, the personal God, distributing justly reward and punishment according to the deeds of man. All these numerous descriptions are collected by Shankara under the wide mantle of the exoteric theology, the sagunã vidyã of Brahman, consisting of numerous vidyas adapted for approaching the Eternal Being not by the way of knowledge but by the way of worshiping, and having each its particular fruits. Mark, [Page 5] that also the conception of God as a personal being îsvara, is merely exoteric and does not give us a conform knowledge of the Âtman; and indeed, when we consider what is personality, how narrow in its limitations, how closely connected to egoism the counterpart of Godly essence, who might think so low of God, to impute him personality ? In the sharpest contrast to these exoteric vidyãs stands the esoteric, nirguriã vidyã of the Âtman; and its fundamental tenet is the absolute inaccessibility of God to human thoughts and words; Page 2 Adyar Pamphlets The Philosophy of the Vedanta in Its Relations... No. 136 and again: and the celebrated formula occurring so often in Brihadãranyaka-Upanishad; neti! neti, viz., whatever attempt you make to know the Âtman, whatever description you give of him, I always say: na iti, na iti, it is not so, it is not so ! Therefore the wise Bhãva, when asked by the king Vãshkalin, to explain the Brahman kept silence. And when the king repeated his request again and again, the rishi broke out into the answer: “I tell it to you, but you don't understand it; cãnto' yam ãtmã, this Âtmã is silence!” We know it now by the Kantian philosophy, that the answer of Bhãva was correct, [Page 6] we know it, that the very organization of our intellect (which is bound once for ever to its innate forms of intuition, space, time and causality) excludes us from a knowledge of the spaceless, timeless, Godly reality for ever and ever. And yet the Âtman, the only Godly being is not unattainable to us, is even not far from us for we have it fully and totally in ourselves as our own metaphysical entity; and here when returning from the outside and apparent world to the deepest secrets of our own nature, we may come to God, not by knowledge, but by anubhava, by absorption into our own self. There is a great difference between knowledge, in which subject and object are distinct from each other, and anubhava, where subject and object coincide in the same. He who by anubhava comes to the great intelligence, “aham brahma asmi” obtains a state called by Shankara Samrãdhanam, accomplished satisfaction; and indeed, what might he desire, who feels and vows himself as the sum and totality of all existence ! II. COSMOLOGY Here again we meet the distinction of exoteric and esoteric doctrine, though not so clearly severed by Shankara as in other parts of his system. The exoteric Cosmology according to the natural but erroneous realism (avidyã) in which we are born, considers this world as the reality and can [Page 7] express its entire dependency of Brahman only by the mythical way of a creation of the world, by Brahman. So a temporal creation of the world, even as in the Christian documents, is also taught in various and well-known passages of the Upanishads. But such a creation of the material world by an immaterial cause, performed in a certain point of time after an eternity elapsed uselessly, is not only against the demands of human reason and natural science, but also against another important doctrine of the Vedãnta, which teaches and must teach (as we shall see hereafter) the “beginninglessness of the migration of souls”, samsãrasya anãditvam. Here the expedient of Shankara is very clever and worthy of imitation. Instead of the temporary creation once for ever of the Upanishads, he teaches that the world in great periods is created and reabsorbed by Brahman (referring to the misunderstood verse of the Rigveda: ). This mutual creation and reabsorption lasts from eternity, and no creation can be allowed by our system to be a first one, and that for good reasons, as we shall see just now. If we ask : Why has God created the world ? The answers to this question are generally very unsatisfactory. For his own glorification ? How may we attribute to him so much vanity! For his particular amusement ? But he was an eternity without this play- Page 3 Adyar Pamphlets The Philosophy of the Vedanta in Its Relations..